Anonymous
Post 07/26/2011 12:19     Subject: Re:Why don't you believe in God?
Anonymous wrote: So scientists' inability to explain the origin of life by naturalist causes should be considered problematic. But Dawkins flatly states, "The present lack of a definitely accepted account of the origin of life should certainly not be taken as a stumbling block for the whole Darwinian worldview." But what if all the evidence shows life could not arise from purely naturalistic causes? That is where we stand right now, with the complexity of the simplest single cell surpassing Darwin's imagination. There is no application of evolutionary theory that can explain the origin of information in living things, much less the presence of all the interworking functions of a single living cell.


Except your premise is false. It's been demonstrated that crystal pattern species in clay can spontaneously self replicate and evolve based on natural selection. The argument that this doesn't get us all the way to evolving living cells is equivalent to the argument that a supposed "missing link" in the evolutionary chain disproves that humans and apes share a common ancestor.

See e.g, this study (or google crystal patterns evolve): http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCAQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dna.caltech.edu%2FPapers%2Fsimple-ca-evolution2011-LNCS.pdf&ei=I-cuToLaMpO78gOzjeFc&usg=AFQjCNGMGXGHcbGV-MJKzGs8VNsBNRzzWA
Anonymous
Post 07/26/2011 07:28     Subject: Why don't you believe in God?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Heavy-handed as I was, you still seem to have missed the point (well, OK - you avoided it). The point is that you can't reasonably request an explanation for the absence of my belief in an imperceptible, ill-defined entity unless you can explain the absence of your belief in another one.


OP here, to apologize for my response. I should not have been so dismissive.

After another long day of temporary single motherhood, sadly, my brain is not up to defining God this very moment. I can point you to my earlier posts, where I outline my thought process, and promise a definition in the near future.

Who do you think God is?

I appreciate the civility - no problem.

Your closing question is emblematic of the problem with discussions like this. In my experience, most believers have difficulty understanding the scope of their assumptions, which assumptions I don't share.

Pretend that you're addressing someone completely ignorant of Christianity or even monotheism. Your question doesn't make any sense to that person, right? You might as well ask that person, "Who do you think Glorp is?"

You can probably develop some definition of God, but it will presumably contain clauses that keep the concept essentially undefined - you'll probably say that several aspects of God are beyond human comprehension.

My original question will still remain, then - why don't you believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster? (BTW, I didn't make that name up - you can look the idea up.) That's a rhetorical question, obviously - the point is, do you think that it's reasonable for you to be asked to give reasons for not believing in the FSM? If not, why should you be asking others why they don't believe in your God - how do you distinguish God from the FSM?
Anonymous
Post 07/26/2011 07:07     Subject: Why don't you believe in God?
OP, Dawkins doesn't speak for all atheists. I don't keep up with his writing or speaking. That's kind of one of the ideas behind "free-thinking": we don't follow any one person or group or think as instructed.

I don't understand why people want to anoint him king of the atheists. He's a biologist. He's not the only scientist to believe in or write about evolution.
Anonymous
Post 07/26/2011 03:16     Subject: Re:Why don't you believe in God?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:

OK this is absurd. Why don't you strip out your hatred of Richard Dawkins and say in your own words what you think the problem is with evolution / natural selection? This is a mess.


PP, I love Richard Dawkins like a brother. Please tell me what was "absurd," and what was a "mess," and we can talk about it.


For starters, you are criticizing the writings of Dawkins and then making general conclusions about all "naturalists". Dawkins is neither our pope nor our priest. It is crazy to hang a critique of all of naturalism on a word choice he made in a book. It would be easier if you separate the two. But even so, you are misconstruing his statement. He has written enough on the subject for you to know that.


Second, you ask the question "what if all the evidence shows life could not arise from purely naturalistic causes?" But nothing you point out actually contradicts evolutionary theory, even though that is what your above question demands for an answer. You merely point out that it does not have an answer for everything yet. And for that matter, you make categorical statements that evolutionary theory has no explanations for various unspecified functions within living cells, but in fact it has hypotheses on how many of these things occurred.

Third, you make this poetic statement about cells surpassing Darwin's imagination, as though that is proof of something. Darwin's contribution to science was not cell biology. It was evolution through natural selection. He did not need to understand the inner workings of the cell to make good observations about how organisms evolve any more than Gregor Mendel needed to understand the structure of the genome to describe how inheritance worked, or for you to understand modern physics in order to predict what will happen when you throw a ball in the air.

Fourth, regarding the weasel program. You clearly misunderstand the point about the target. In real life, the target is not a "sequence". The target is "fitness to reproduce". A bad mutation makes an organism less likely to make it to maturity, to find a mate, and to reproduce. A good mutation increases the odds. That is (drumroll please) natural selection. Nature selects the fittest examples. If this was not obvious by reading the book, it is plainly stated on the wikipedia page entitled "weasel program". Your lock analogy only describes the first part of the experiment, but not the second.

As for the statement about the program being "misleading", did you really think that a day-long desktop programming exercise about weasels with typewriters would fully capture the details of evolution? He is admitting that the goal in nature is not long term like in the weasel program, but short term. However, that does not invalidate the exercise. And surely you know that natural selection, in addition to being studied in nature, has been simulated on a computer before.

So then to conclude, you accuse someone (Dawkins? all naturalists) of permeating the discussions with logical fallacies. But really, short of that one accusation you made against Dawkins for his choice of the word "must", what logical fallacies are you talking about?

(And it would help if you not break the quoting structure in your replies. It messes up every downstream post, which is why I have to repost this. )
Anonymous
Post 07/26/2011 03:09     Subject: Re:Why don't you believe in God?
Anonymous wrote:.


OK this is absurd. Why don't you strip out your hatred of Richard Dawkins and say in your own words what you think the problem is with evolution / natural selection? This is a mess.


PP, I love Richard Dawkins like a brother. Please tell me what was "absurd," and what was a "mess," and we can talk about it.


For starters, you are criticizing the writings of Dawkins and then making general conclusions about all "naturalists". Dawkins is neither our pope nor our priest. It is crazy to hang a critique of all of naturalism on a word choice he made in a book. It would be easier if you separate the two. But even so, you are misconstruing his statement. He has written enough on the subject for you to know that.


Second, you ask the question "what if all the evidence shows life could not arise from purely naturalistic causes?" But nothing you point out actually contradicts evolutionary theory, even though that is what your above question demands for an answer. You merely point out that it does not have an answer for everything yet. And for that matter, you make categorical statements that evolutionary theory has no explanations for various unspecified functions within living cells, but in fact it has hypotheses on how many of these things occurred.

Third, you make this poetic statement about cells surpassing Darwin's imagination, as though that is proof of something. Darwin's contribution to science was not cell biology. It was evolution through natural selection. He did not need to understand the inner workings of the cell to make good observations about how organisms evolve any more than Gregor Mendel needed to understand the structure of the genome to describe how inheritance worked, or for you to understand modern physics in order to predict what will happen when you throw a ball in the air.

Fourth, regarding the weasel program. You clearly misunderstand the point about the target. In real life, the target is not a "sequence". The target is "fitness to reproduce". A bad mutation makes an organism less likely to make it to maturity, to find a mate, and to reproduce. A good mutation increases the odds. That is (drumroll please) natural selection. Nature selects the fittest examples. If this was not obvious by reading the book, it is plainly stated on the wikipedia page entitled "weasel program". Your lock analogy only describes the first part of the experiment, but not the second.

As for the statement about the program being "misleading", did you really think that a day-long desktop programming exercise about weasels with typewriters would fully capture the details of evolution? He is admitting that the goal in nature is not long term like in the weasel program, but short term. However, that does not invalidate the exercise. And surely you know that natural selection, in addition to being studied in nature, has been simulated on a computer before.

So then to conclude, you accuse someone (Dawkins? all naturalists) of permeating the discussions with logical fallacies. But really, short of that one accusation you made against Dawkins for his choice of the word "must", what logical fallacies are you talking about?
Anonymous
Post 07/25/2011 22:21     Subject: Re:Why don't you believe in God?
.


OK this is absurd. Why don't you strip out your hatred of Richard Dawkins and say in your own words what you think the problem is with evolution / natural selection? This is a mess.


PP, I love Richard Dawkins like a brother. Please tell me what was "absurd," and what was a "mess," and we can talk about it.
Anonymous
Post 07/25/2011 21:58     Subject: Why don't you believe in God?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:I'm late to the party. While I craft my answer about God, would the OP please tell us why s/he does not believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster? This is OP's chance to explain his/herself.
.

This post makes me think of when strangers see me with my children and say, "you've got your hands full!"

I smile politely at their reflexive, unthinking stab at wit, and then I move on with my day.

Heavy-handed as I was, you still seem to have missed the point (well, OK - you avoided it). The point is that you can't reasonably request an explanation for the absence of my belief in an imperceptible, ill-defined entity unless you can explain the absence of your belief in another one.


OP here, to apologize for my response. I should not have been so dismissive.

After another long day of temporary single motherhood, sadly, my brain is not up to defining God this very moment. I can point you to my earlier posts, where I outline my thought process, and promise a definition in the near future.

Who do you think God is?
Anonymous
Post 07/25/2011 21:24     Subject: Re:Why don't you believe in God?
Anonymous wrote:Theories of evolution technically begin after the appearance of the first living cell. However, Dawkins devoted one chapter of The Blind Watchmaker to speculation about applying evolutionary theories to the origin of life.

Of course, if Dawkins is correct there is no Designer of any kind, that would include the time before the origin of life. So scientists' inability to explain the origin of life by naturalist causes should be considered problematic. But Dawkins flatly states, "The present lack of a definitely accepted account of the origin of life should certainly not be taken as a stumbling block for the whole Darwinian worldview." But what if all the evidence shows life could not arise from purely naturalistic causes? That is where we stand right now, with the complexity of the simplest single cell surpassing Darwin's imagination. There is no application of evolutionary theory that can explain the origin of information in living things, much less the presence of all the interworking functions of a single living cell. But after several speculations, Dawkins concludes, "This chapter has had the modest aim of explaining only the kind of way in which it must have happened." (emphasis mine) In other words, he is working backwards from a necessary conclusion. And his necessary conclusion is that there is no Designer.

But let's skip past the origin of life issue, to when evolutionary theory actually can be applied. In the chapter titled "Accumulating small change," Dawkins uses his "Methinks it is like a weasel" example in an attempt to demonstrate how what should be a mathematical impossibility of progressive complexity is actually accomplished in a much smaller series of steps when some of the small changes are retained along the way. (If you don't already know this analogy, it is easily found elsewhere, so I won't detail it here.) Rather than starting over from scratch every time with the letters necessary to make this sentence, if some letters are retained each time, it would not require as many chances to accomplish.

What is the logical problem with this explanation? If you are a naturalist, there is no Designer, no direction. But if so, where would this "target sequence" be stored as a goal to achieve?

A simple way to see how this explanation is fatally flawed is to think of the target sequence as a combination lock. If you don't know the combination, getting half of the letters "right" is no improvement over having none of the letters right.

This analogy was meant to demonstrate that "variation is generated at random, but selection among variants is non-random." Natural selection requires a function to select. There is no function in a lock combination that does not work.

Dawkins admits the program was never intended to model biological evolution accurately:

"Although the monkey/Shakespeare model is useful for explaining the distinction between single-step selection and cumulative selection, it is misleading in important ways. One of these is that, in each generation of selective 'breeding', the mutant 'progeny' phrases were judged according to the criterion of resemblance to a distant ideal target, the phrase METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL. Life isn't like that. Evolution has no long-term goal. There is no long-distance target, no final perfection to serve as a criterion for selection, although human vanity cherishes the absurd notion that our species is the final goal of evolution. In real life, the criterion for selection is always short-term, either simple survival or, more generally, reproductive success." (bold mine)

There would be no survival, much less reproductive success, from a fatal mutation, and the ratio of harmful to beneficial mutations does not inspire optimism for "progress."

Darwin stated emphatically, "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down." But some neo-Darwinists refuse to follow the evidence if it may lead towards a Designer.

These instances of logical fallacies permeate the discussions of those who cannot consider the possibility of a Creator.


OK this is absurd. Why don't you strip out your hatred of Richard Dawkins and say in your own words what you think the problem is with evolution / natural selection? This is a mess.
Anonymous
Post 07/25/2011 20:42     Subject: Re:Why don't you believe in God?
Theories of evolution technically begin after the appearance of the first living cell. However, Dawkins devoted one chapter of The Blind Watchmaker to speculation about applying evolutionary theories to the origin of life.

Of course, if Dawkins is correct there is no Designer of any kind, that would include the time before the origin of life. So scientists' inability to explain the origin of life by naturalist causes should be considered problematic. But Dawkins flatly states, "The present lack of a definitely accepted account of the origin of life should certainly not be taken as a stumbling block for the whole Darwinian worldview." But what if all the evidence shows life could not arise from purely naturalistic causes? That is where we stand right now, with the complexity of the simplest single cell surpassing Darwin's imagination. There is no application of evolutionary theory that can explain the origin of information in living things, much less the presence of all the interworking functions of a single living cell. But after several speculations, Dawkins concludes, "This chapter has had the modest aim of explaining only the kind of way in which it must have happened." (emphasis mine) In other words, he is working backwards from a necessary conclusion. And his necessary conclusion is that there is no Designer.

But let's skip past the origin of life issue, to when evolutionary theory actually can be applied. In the chapter titled "Accumulating small change," Dawkins uses his "Methinks it is like a weasel" example in an attempt to demonstrate how what should be a mathematical impossibility of progressive complexity is actually accomplished in a much smaller series of steps when some of the small changes are retained along the way. (If you don't already know this analogy, it is easily found elsewhere, so I won't detail it here.) Rather than starting over from scratch every time with the letters necessary to make this sentence, if some letters are retained each time, it would not require as many chances to accomplish.

What is the logical problem with this explanation? If you are a naturalist, there is no Designer, no direction. But if so, where would this "target sequence" be stored as a goal to achieve?

A simple way to see how this explanation is fatally flawed is to think of the target sequence as a combination lock. If you don't know the combination, getting half of the letters "right" is no improvement over having none of the letters right.

This analogy was meant to demonstrate that "variation is generated at random, but selection among variants is non-random." Natural selection requires a function to select. There is no function in a lock combination that does not work.

Dawkins admits the program was never intended to model biological evolution accurately:

"Although the monkey/Shakespeare model is useful for explaining the distinction between single-step selection and cumulative selection, it is misleading in important ways. One of these is that, in each generation of selective 'breeding', the mutant 'progeny' phrases were judged according to the criterion of resemblance to a distant ideal target, the phrase METHINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL. Life isn't like that. Evolution has no long-term goal. There is no long-distance target, no final perfection to serve as a criterion for selection, although human vanity cherishes the absurd notion that our species is the final goal of evolution. In real life, the criterion for selection is always short-term, either simple survival or, more generally, reproductive success." (bold mine)

There would be no survival, much less reproductive success, from a fatal mutation, and the ratio of harmful to beneficial mutations does not inspire optimism for "progress."

Darwin stated emphatically, "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down." But some neo-Darwinists refuse to follow the evidence if it may lead towards a Designer.

These instances of logical fallacies permeate the discussions of those who cannot consider the possibility of a Creator.
Anonymous
Post 07/25/2011 20:26     Subject: Why don't you believe in God?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:I'm late to the party. While I craft my answer about God, would the OP please tell us why s/he does not believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster? This is OP's chance to explain his/herself.
.

This post makes me think of when strangers see me with my children and say, "you've got your hands full!"

I smile politely at their reflexive, unthinking stab at wit, and then I move on with my day.

Heavy-handed as I was, you still seem to have missed the point (well, OK - you avoided it). The point is that you can't reasonably request an explanation for the absence of my belief in an imperceptible, ill-defined entity unless you can explain the absence of your belief in another one.
Anonymous
Post 07/25/2011 20:20     Subject: Why don't you believe in God?
Still waiting for new ways of acquiring knowledge. What's it going to be? Unexplained facts + reason + ? = God. At least that's better than "I want it therefore it is".
Anonymous
Post 07/25/2011 19:13     Subject: Re:Why don't you believe in God?
Anonymous wrote:

The fun starts when "proving a negative" atheists like Dawkins try to prove the scientific method is the only way to know truth. But that will have to wait for a later post.


So much blather. As far as Dawkins trying "to prove a negative", you'll probably want to show your work. Anyway, I think you like to hear yourself think a lot more than you're interested in a structured argument. Frankly, most of this stuff just doesn't cohere. It's just somewhat sloppy thinking designed to elicit an "Amen" from the choir. There's no evidence that you've even understood half of what's been said to you.

Bottom line is, you believe in God because you were told to from an early age, in a culture that privileged the Judeo-Christian God, and you're working backwards from that conclusion. All the rhapsodizing about "opaqueness being reflected back into the eye" and mischaracterizing the position of non-theists is bluster. Could there be a metaphysical world? Of course, so long as it's one which we can never sense, influence, or have influence us. But that doesn't get us very far. As far as you various "kinds of truths": #1 which pretty much equates to "the irrational", #3 is "the rational", and #2 is what is usually referred to as "hokum". We dealt with this about 30 comments ago (e.g. "The Miracle of the Sun", and "My Pancake Looks A Bit Like Judas Iscariot")


This made me smile. If I happened to share I was raised by fundamentalist atheist parents who come from the other side of the world where Christianity is almost unheard of, you would not believe me, and that is only appropriate, since you would have to have faith in me But your assumptions are telling.

As for examples of the different ways to know the truth:
#1 revealed truth (like the Trinity)
#2 revealed truth that can be known by reason (there is one God, there is objective morality, man is material and immaterial)
#3 truth that can be known by reason (laws of physics, logic)

Dawkins gets his own post.


Anonymous
Post 07/25/2011 19:01     Subject: Re:Why don't you believe in God?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:]

I do not think you know what the term "a priori" is. "A priori" means independent of evidence.

You keep promising that you will show us new ways to know truth. Please don't make it some pitiful dummy's guide to epistemology followed by a poetic twist that somehow shoehorns faith into a redefined concept of knowledge.

Faith is not evidence. And faith is not a type of reasoning. Faith is a belief.


Goodness gracious, that is exactly what I mean.

Some atheists--not all, but some--have made a decision that God cannot exist. No amount of "evidence" of any kind would convince them otherwise.

Anonymous
Post 07/25/2011 14:12     Subject: Why don't you believe in God?
Anonymous wrote:I an atheist, but some of my clutch phrases are "Oh, my God/Gosh; Jesus Christ and Good Lord". They pop out of my mouth uncontrollably at times. Is this a sign? Ugh. I feel so wrong.


A phrase is a phrase, and those phrases are all very cultural (and habitual) rather then religious.

People say "holy shit" - doesn't mean they think shit is holy. People say "holy batman!" it doesn't mean they think batman is real.
Anonymous
Post 07/25/2011 13:42     Subject: Re:Why don't you believe in God?
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:


Oh, dear! Back to epistemology...but it is too late to describe different ways we can know things.

For now, just note that rationalists who contend we may only know what the scientific method can prove have a self-negating system, for we cannot test whether the scientific method is the only way to know things using the scientific method. And even scientists and mathematicians use logic along with empirical evidence...deduction and induction...and so forth.

And it does up generally come down to probability rather than certainty, for physical and metaphysical questions, doesn't it? God is reasonable but not obvious--that, at least, is plausible?


OK. The scientific method is pretty much the acquisition of knowledge through evidence. If you know of another way to do it, offer it up.

And probability is used in science, but not in the way that you imply. Saying that science deals in probabilities means that they carefully analyze a set of data and determine the mathematical probability that their result is due to random chance. It is not the same as saying "nothing is certain, so everything is just an opinion", or "does God exist? Well there is a lot of unexplained stuff in the world, so probably".



Just want to thank you for making any of my future posts superfluous. I would like to buy you a drink.


The above are two very, very different statements.

Neither rationalists nor theists would subscribe to the first statement, which is either universal skepticism ("No truth is knowable") or universal subjectivism ("all truth is an opinion, i.e. dependent on the knower" ).

The second statement is religious skepticism. It claims we may know truth about the physical world by the scientific method, but since any truth about the metaphysical world cannot be subjected to the scientific method, we cannot know the truth about metaphysics.

Some rationalists then prove a negative. "There is no evidence of God, therefore there is no God." This is an a priori decision. According to their method of knowing truth, God cannot possibly be known. What we cannot know does not exist.

Some rationalists realize it is not possible to prove a negative. But since they cannot know God in the only way they can know anything, they consign "knowledge" of God very strictly to irrational belief in the unseen and untested. They call that "faith," and exclude faith from reason.

Where rationalists see "no evidence," theists see opaqueness, some light reflected back to the eye, but neither utter darkness nor transparency. Theists distinguish three different kinds of truths:

#1 truths of faith and not of reason
#2 truths of both faith and reason
#3 truths of reason and not of faith

Theists try to answer objections to propositions in #1, prove propositions in #2, and share acceptance of propositions in #3.

The fun starts when "proving a negative" atheists like Dawkins try to prove the scientific method is the only way to know truth. But that will have to wait for a later post.


So much blather. As far as Dawkins trying "to prove a negative", you'll probably want to show your work. Anyway, I think you like to hear yourself think a lot more than you're interested in a structured argument. Frankly, most of this stuff just doesn't cohere. It's just somewhat sloppy thinking designed to elicit an "Amen" from the choir. There's no evidence that you've even understood half of what's been said to you.

Bottom line is, you believe in God because you were told to from an early age, in a culture that privileged the Judeo-Christian God, and you're working backwards from that conclusion. All the rhapsodizing about "opaqueness being reflected back into the eye" and mischaracterizing the position of non-theists is bluster. Could there be a metaphysical world? Of course, so long as it's one which we can never sense, influence, or have influence us. But that doesn't get us very far. As far as you various "kinds of truths": #1 which pretty much equates to "the irrational", #3 is "the rational", and #2 is what is usually referred to as "hokum". We dealt with this about 30 comments ago (e.g. "The Miracle of the Sun", and "My Pancake Looks A Bit Like Judas Iscariot")